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Sky News

Last night the Guardian released details of an email sent to Sky News employees that outlined new social media guidelines.

Of course, the most sensational part of this – that staff now seem to be banned from retweeting rival “journalists or people on Twitter” – has been highlighted by many amid cries of ‘they just don’t get it’.

Most news organizations get that social media is important. And while many are embracing it, in a lot of cases social media is still kept in a silo.

But Sky News is looking to change that. It plans to install the popular Twitter client Tweetdeck on all of its journalists’ computers in an effort to encourage them to incorporate social media into their news gathering efforts.

Management Today editor Matthew Gwyther is the latest print media veteran to stick the boot into Twitter, labelling it “a tedious fad we would do well to pull the plug on”.

He lambasts the “news editors at the national newspapers” for wading into Twitter without adequate resources “to do it properly”, while accusing them of being “desperate to keep up with the Joneses”.

“The result is an unwholesome mess – a garbled Babel of nonsense that leaves you screaming for a return to the times when we could read all about it the day afterwards over our Cornflakes on a page of newsprint.”

Word to Matthew: you can read it afterwards! You don’t have to tune in to Twitter! It will all become clear the next day.

But there’s a place for Twitter – and a place for real time reporting too…